wearables_workshop_banff [the libarynth]

a few workshop_notes from the workshop “Outside/Inside: Boundary Crossings, a Wearable Design Workshop” July 31 - August 04, 2004 » http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=143

data aesthetics * topological design xinwei, tom, kaki

objects versus stuff, field, networks, continuity
- * impact on technology

artefact-art field-???

tom

wearables - response-action feedback loops - underlying perception

respatialising, resynthesising perceptions uncouple sounds-visuals
creating of new perceptions and new senses
explicit what is implicit in everyday perception
visualising social performance

topological design

mapping one space into another- wearables = coordinate system (static, dynamic) - not a cartesian manifold - 2d shape in 3d
nuance, continuity, curvature

spatial transform chain
quality perserving - by understanding how one space relates to another

jewelry listening to conversation - * phase space - building a conversation in a space - a sentence is a loop - preserves the quality of the conversation, but preserves the richness of it

emotional space that defines the output in the jewelery
data aesthetics - emergent from mapping

kaki

people's behaviour in spaces
mobile ad-hoc networks and topographical design
people behave in decentralised way - social relationships that support ad hoc networks
decentralised systems to illuminate connections between individuals in public spaces
'oscillating windows - workshops looking at how individuals relate to be a node in a network
what social relationships can ad hoc networks can support (umbrella net)
changing qualities of the topology of the network - simultaneously connect and alter subjective experiences in public space (in crowds)
individuals, groups, space

mobile tech in argentina, phillipines intensified political intervention

there is always a design in technology - even if people think they break it, it carries on into their lives
tech constructs and deconstruction of tech happens at the same time

field-affordance-unbounding of perception-field of opportunities and stimulations artefact-art

context and situated interaction change by changing the elements of context ted krueger - animal magnetism, magnetism as a 6th sense massumi + deleuze other territory that can be seen as perception

spiderman 2 the game - experiencing the city as a swinging city LA experience - la freeway - land of islands and highways making garments that alter physical and mental topologies

ian borden - skating and architecture

the world we live in is not cartesian sensor spaces are not euclidean guatari

'osmosis'
maybe all we need is to cope with life, not sure some delusion
the kitchen is interesting 1/2 space between institution and the patients
patients allowed to assume real roles not as a subject of the machine, but as the components of it
bindings and mappings are not 1to1 (when 2 people share one umbrella is one node in the network topology)

victoria vesna http://people.i-dat.org/detail/?csvv

skin patented by microsoft

nanotech fashion and technology class

best way to learn it is to teach it
no fashion after chanel
no painting after malevich
tech with net art
collaboration with nano tech scientists

we cant wait for the future (the interesting wearable tech is not here yet)
most students immediately connected to the environment and ecology

tech influencing clothes but also our social space and the environment
clothes with the invisible, ancient cosmologies
astrology and colour in the visible and invisible spectrum

nano exhibition - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec04/nano_07-16.html

large environment
arch - dymaxian map -
projections and sensors - moving through space and influencing the space through it

otis school of fashion and ucla design and media arts

fashion influencing who we are instead of just a skin
projecting patterns on white cloth
fantasy environment, not shying away from beauty - quite utopian
shedding clothes

-fabric helps moving more fluidly through space

geometries found in nature - the only connection to the technological world
fashion schools very backward - if we want to engage them, we need to develop a new market
working with models was such a frustration - dance choreographer helped the situation - included dancers instead of models

architecture - bit part of the design
dresses blended in - clothing is interconnected with the environment - designed to be projected on
manipulating bucky balls with their shadows
exhibition - still when there is no one around it
going into the grain of sand
dancers enacting the installation
nano tech and possiblity of materials, ordered some quantum dots - sitting + waiting for an application
buddhist monks doing a meditation on the number of molecules in the wall, the other about 1000 buddhas balancing on a grain of sand

ris:ome -fashion, ves, mobile tech why?

questions of politics and power (in sociology)
reproduction and maintenance of social order, but also renegotiation of order
hierarchical structures

-cui bono - relations of everyday life - critical interventions social scale

individual and interaction level (fashion, ubiquitous networks) fash - pleasure, performance, display - can be problematic in different social contexts
group (group identification, mediated communities) - fashion - social roles, inequalities - perpetuation or challenges to normative social order?
organisational and institutional (fashion and commodity, organisational networks and databases) - fashion branding, consumption, global inequalities - socual and cultural values and norms that we are building into the wearables?
cross cultural values (spirituality)

flexibility in the mobile networks so groups can move across social context
who owns the mobile networks
ownership, control and appropriation of wearable systems
opennes and flexibility
meaningmaking
learning from today's everyday

nina

for whom are we designing wearables? art and performance, public experiments * already talked about

what other outcomes? market for smart materials: now 300mn USD, growth 11-28% growth over 4 years

lots of monitoring and surveillance
military
sport
safety
high tech fashion
surveillance
extreme sports
games and entertainment

Joe Cunning (national textiles usa) - human expectation very high

eminent (european - more cautious prediction)
avantex
gorix - biomedical

mike

thad starner - intel will abandon desktop computing for wearables in 15 years or so… what will happen to microsoft? (now 3:1 - wearables:desktops) 'zero power computing' (david may, bristol) fashion and history - the watch and wearables: 'time and time again' (iswc 2002 tom martin) vernor vinge ieee spectrum july 2004 'sensor nation' - silent messaging - alternative forms communicating with wearables (getting away from the keyboard paradigm)

tom

nokia and swatch - * shift from mobile phones to 'personal electronic devices'

wearables as 'communication systems' - about messaging + information collection (scary)

- * too much influenced by modible phones and pdas

more about energy and actuation?
change our personal environment, communicate between different environments
techniques that we were looking at - very old fashioned (weaving, silk screening, chips, pics…) - there are other flexible materials that can do distributed processing in the body - getting stuff to stick together better - how to make the wearables more robust

–

catherine

memory - importance of being able to forget
communication - personal expression as communication - what kind of context do we need to have a meaningful communication
networks (ad hoc networkds) - why are they always so simmetrical? ——– translation between protocols
are we simplifying the experience of embodied reality?

comfort! (no chips in clothing) responsive - not connected to technology? molecular structure of self connected to the molecular structure of the garment foam - interesting material that has not been used for performance - subversiveness of electronics gives new performance options

comfort - picking a comfortable personalised armour

mobile phone is a new sword - not about identity but possession

communication -caught in a relationship with data not homogenous protocols -sharing and mismatch of protocols in conversations 'designing for erasure' of materials networks that appear and disappear - interesting for fashion - ephemeral events ecology of the ways that materials are produced - transformation of garments (having 1 garment that changes as needed) physical chemistry in relation to clothes that you wear + light –> colour structure, geometry… of garments economic model -cell phones, music industry - downloading your 'image' emotions, clothes embed emotional memory + physiological memory (sweat, deformation) mapping interior state in the exterior - what i choose is how i feel - personal style - * prescribed transition takes away that choice (chemical reactions)- variable transitions more interesting when done with electronics (reconfigurable architectures) choice - colour is very culturally specific -can wearables reintroduce the local colour difference - or will it homogenise telecomunication and gesture not only choosing our clothes but choosing what being we want to make negative choice in clothing - subcultures white bikini on a beach - * clothing as form of social control

– yacov clothing for cyber human characters performance situation with no lighting texture of the body made out of glass transparencies

– sara performance in code zebra chat visualisation system navigating identities on internet camouflage, seduction, attack, patterning, abstraction cross disciplinary flirtation renegotiate identity biological and mobile chat space fixed and changeable shapeshifting dance and text performance back in performance spectacle, non improvised performance moodshifts within the audience space change the space for the performers thematic club experiences animal identities humans shapeshifting into animals antropomorphic characteristics using dance and stretch workshops to teach people about knitwear

time and memory

shapeshifting in garments through time
touch as memory

jenny dress that can tell time through scent

scents to influence memory
extend sense of smell with artificial senses
helping the elderly, alzheimers
smell helps with mental health
diseases have a particular smell
smelly clock to tell different time

joey

how important the idea of memory is when we buy clothes
we purchase manufactured memories
clothing when you try on you feel like you have just had sex

steve man - capturing every moment

pervasive computing - environments to help us remember anything

memory rich garments (collaboration with students)

intimacy
evidence + digital tech - we can edit the history of use
garments that can remember with touch (when, where, how much)
shouldn't be terrified by the body
intimate memory (touch, groping, whispering)
circuit design as a decorative element
soft circuits with connections glued with conductive epoxy
thermo chromic - direct memory
touch pads and feathery dresses - choreographed touch

electronic vs the body - interplay betweeen the body and the electronix paltier junction - cool down very fast + body heat changes other parts public and private collection of smells/memories information harvest - what do we store and memory and what not

victoria 'building a community of people with no time' - how are you? im busy.

fundamental need to connect to geometries in nature
notime body made from a tetrahedron

http://notime.arts.ucla.edu

project that can grow on its own physically and online

cellular trans-actions - primary shape - hexagon (satellite systems and gsms divides the city in hexagons - most efficient packing system in nature

using cell phones to talk to people in the same space

simplifying life - not making it less complex - cant do it alone, need a collaborative situation

active materials should be outside of fashion industry, but more in performance
tapping in communication patterns in animal - pursuing our instincts through technology

where is the passion in here?? too many intellectual discussions…

collective memory - making one prototype as opposed to making many

absolute minimum number for a collective
digital technologies manufacture collective memory
memory embedded in your entire body - extension of it - should be in coordination with our structures
too many machines do not match biological structures

conclusions:

gulf between theory and practice
approach to responsiveness in general : simple but engaging systems, other really choreographed
ethical side - fashion personally oriented, but also social constructs
power sources
there were more aesthetic questions than ethical
looking at more traditional techniquest
grotowsky, artaud - mystical theatre, who are we as bodies in the world
not looking at the language, but how can bodies engage one another
gestures prior to words
more discussions about where the body begins and where does it end
world sensing instead of world sensing
where do the bodies come from? - emergence of the body